Dispatches from the Control Room – January 16

Arch-nemesis producer Jim had an emergency and called in, saying he wouldn’t be able to make it. Blam! My workload doubled. There would be no time to blog.

Why not bring in a replacement, you ask? Well, we only have one replacement producer in the mornings, and she’s on vacation. So if any of us falls ill or gets crushed by a heavy object or is eaten by a shark, everyone else just has to do twice as much work. It’s a lovely system.

But Jim actually managed to take care of the emergency and make it in. I was so overjoyed, I nearly hugged him. But dudes don’t hug dudes. And Jim is still my arch-nemesis because I lost that bet and had to buy him donuts once. But today he was my hero for showing up.

We really need to work on this staffing situation. If the President is incapacitated, you swear in the Vice President immediately. (Or, if you’re lucky, Alexander Haig takes control.) Fail-safes, people. Fail-safes.

* Virginia wants you to think twice about your… um… trailer hitch decorations. I remember the first time I saw one of those. My soul died that day.

* Speaking of that body part, an armed robber at a convenience store shoved his gun into his pants and it went off, sending a bullet right through. If anyone deserves that, it’d be an armed robber. But my membership in the fraternal order of Men with Man Parts requires that I cringe in solidarity.

Clown appreciation (or even tolerance) would be a deal-breaker for me in a relationship. Like if I had the best blind date of my life, then went over to the girl’s apartment, only to see a shelf filled with ceramic hobo clowns, I’d fling myself out a window sooner than spend another second in her presence.

Has anyone ever found a clown funny? Like a grease-painted freak in a red nose and curly wig is supposed to automatically put me in a mood to laugh. To me, seeing someone dressed like that is like waving a red cape in front of a bull. I just want to gore the guy.

* I watched the documentary “Crazy Love” last night. Mind blowing. It’s about this weird lawyer guy who went out with a young girl in the 1950s. But when the relationship soured and she got engaged to another guy, the lawyer hired some goons to throw lye in her face, blinding and disfiguring her. It only gets weirder from there. Worth the rental, if only to allay your fears that you are in a terrible relationship. That is a terrible relationship.

* Oprah is getting her own TV network. Just what she needs: more exposure. Is she going to give away a car every hour on the hour? (Free cars on the fives?)

I’m so over Oprah. I get that some women feel fulfilled by her brand of vague esteem-boosting, but she seems more like a dangerous cult leader to me. Rather than helping women think for themselves, she just commands them all to think like her. Her network will be called OWN, as in, “Oprah wants to OWN your soul.”

* Time to turn my attention once again to the paragraph that heads this page. It suggests that on this blog, you can read musings from Dick and Zoraida. I think Dick has mused but twice (none in ’08). Zoraida has yet to muse, unless you count one comment on a post of mine. You’re disappointed, aren’t you?